Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Minmatar - get same damage bonuses and can select damage types. They are the least techbologically advanced race in lore and they have the best damage selection in EVE?

Caldari- can select damage but have dumb Kinectic damage bonus.... again in lore its Minmatar vs Amarr, and Caldari vs Gallente. I propose you give Caldari a 4% overall damage bonus, or at least change it to Explosive to fit with Gallente weaknesses and lore.

Gallente - The most technologically advanced race in lore. (some would argue Amarr) They shoot Kin / Thermal, however they are heavy users of drones which have selectable damage types and application. I feel they are in a good place.


Now for the problem child......

Amarr - Use lasers, which is very cool. Lasers come in many frequencies or both light and sound. It is not unthinkable to imagine that one of the most advanced races in the game can figure out how to make laser ammo that does kinectic or explosive damage. Now it is of a different wave length so you can make them differnce ranges and damage power. This would also mean adding a 5 second timer to change ammo types to keep them in line. However the point is, its time to give this poor race some selectable damage. The EM / therm only option is really old and needs to be updated.


Wild

Lasers do not use sound. Even if they did, sound cannot travel through a vacuum.

I do not see how anyone could make light explode or be solid enough for kinetic damage, even the Amarr.

Amarr, Minmatar and Caldari have more ships capable of firing missiles than Gallente.

All shields are weak to EM. Amarr weaponry exploits that.

So far....sounds balanced.

I understand the concerns.... yes I think its possible that a space traveling race far more advanced than ours can figure out how to make light explode , or compress its mass. It is technically possible.

Now to adress one concern.... instead of overall damage bonuses, they too could get a bonuse to one type... say EM, like caldari and their Kinetic bonus, however this way they would still have a chance or option to change types.

Phasers don't work in a vacuum.

However, I can't get over the fact that one of the spokespersons in the article is named Mahboob.

You should really let your dumb out at a much slower pace.

Lasers =/= Phasers and sound still does not travel in a vacuum.

Light isn't solid. How could it form a vacuum-proof mantle to carry the sound? If it could, this mantle needs to be filled with matter to transmit the sound.

Or are you thinking this is done by Elfin Magic?

Minmatar projectile weapons only get semi-selectable damage (it is never fully selectable, there is at least one Minmatar damage type (Explosive or Kinetic) in all projectile ammo) because the weapons almost never operate in optimal range... so they need something to compensate for their lack of punching power.

And drones are not as selectable as you think OP. Most PvPers choose them based on stats and not damage type (the meta is still very much Gallente drones for brawling, Minmatar for skirmish/anti-kiting, and Amarr sentries for high-tracking+range... even after the "drone rebalance").

As for the "locked in damage types"... the DEVs see that as "racial flavor" and prefer balancing around it so that not everything is equal against everything.

In a way, I am inclined to agree with them.

You're a smart guy... you know the downsides of projectiles just like you know the advantages of lasers. Just like i'm sure you knowingly overlooked the Drone boats/Missile boats amarr have now - despite claiming that gallente are 'fine' because they have drones.

Did you lose a bet and post this as a forfeit?

I once had a very boring decade with nothing to do in my spare time but read Science.

The important thing to remember is that light does not have properties such as momentum, simple vectors or electromagnetic/thermal/kinetic force until it is interacted with. It exists as both a wave and particle but only has these properties as a result of becoming a particle that is not a photon due to an interaction.

No matter what sound needs a physical medium. Sound is vibration and vibration is a property of physical matter. Not only would you have to project the physical medium at the target but then in an attempt to focus it using the light you would need to keep the two from interacting, because by interacting the properties of both would change resulting in a huge inefficiency. It's much easier to just use the already present wavelengths that light possesses and find ways to manipulate it to be transferred to any physical matter the light interacts with, which is exactly how electromagnetic and thermal forces are projected using lasers. Change the frequency of the light to something that causes a common resonance of the alloys or a reverberating sine that reflects off of itself and you have kinetic.

You also have something that can be prevented with a paint job. But hey, it's the future.

Explosive is even simpler, to the point that modern militaries are already experimenting with it. Pulse lasers are used to create high intensity bursts hundreds of times a second. Bursts that come into contact with a target vaporize the material, and bursts immediately following this vaporization ignite it after it has had the opportunity to expand and mix with oxygen or other flammable gases. This can be mimicked in a vacuum by taking the aforementioned kinetic laser and alternating it with the thermal laser pulses, so that instead of the gases being ignited they are instead compressed and heated even further, then allowed to expand violently again against the physical target.

I fly internet spaceships so I don't have to think about stuff like this anymore, it burns a lot of calories and I already look like a waifish orphan.. This will conclude my contributions to the thread, and I'm going to go back to eating cake.

Thank you so much for your contributions. Was fun talking science with you. You have more backround on this than I and I will take your word on it all. Thanks again!